Connie Morgan with the Mounted/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
THE CANOE ON THE YUKON.
With the opening of the Yukon, the men of B Division, Royal North-west Mounted Police, threw themselves into the work of checking up boats from above, and rendering assistance or relief to the many who had ventured into the land of gold, ignorant and ill-equipped for their battle with the raw. Up and down the river from Dawson the police flag waved above tiny far-flung outpost stations where one or two of the guardians of the wilds stood ready at a moment’s notice to rip a man from the jaws of ungentle death, or maintain the order that has made the vast Canadian North-west conspicuous as the only great frontier the world has ever seen upon which respect for law is the rule rather than the exception.
“Boat ahead!” cried Special Constable Connie Morgan, as the fast little speed boat Aurora chugged around a bold headland of the great river’s East bank. The boy held a pair of binoculars upon a tiny brown speck which floated afar out upon the surface of the river.
“What is she?” asked Sergeant McKeever, who, with an ear for the exhaust, was “tuning up” his new engine.
“Looks like a canoe. She’s in trouble. Drifting sideways, now. Busted paddle, I guess. No, I believe she’s empty.” Connie jerked out his observations, as he held the binoculars upon the rapidly approaching craft.
“Guess you’re right,” assented McKeever, as he scrutinized the canoe which swung aimlessly about in the current. “We’ll just slip a line on her an’ tow her ashore.” He twisted the wheel a trifle and the Aurora, exhaust sputtering like a gattling gun, swept in a wide curve toward the floating canoe.
“There’s someone in her!” exclaimed Connie. “Look! He’s hurt—or something—all doubled up in the bottom!”
McKeever cut off his power and the speed boat glided alongside. As Connie had observed, there was a man in the canoe. The man was an Indian. He was dead.
Grasping the gunwale of the lighter craft, the two held it close against the side of the motor boat, the trained eyes of the older man taking in at a glance every detail of their find. His brows drew together in a frown and he gave a low whistle.
“Somethin’ queer, here, kid. We ain’t the first that’s found him! Come on, let’s get him ashore.”
Connie made a light line fast to the bow of the canoe, McKeever started his engine, and the Aurora chugged slowly toward the bank, dragging the canoe in her wake.
A worn blanket in which were rolled a small can of tea, a corked “pain killer” bottle containing a few sulphur matches, an old velvet “moss bag” in which were some shreds of pemmican, a small bottle of black rifle powder, and a filthy rag in which were wrapped a few lead slugs, constituted the Indian’s trail pack. The officers removed the body and laid it upon the worn blanket, and Sergeant McKeever turned to the boy:
“What do you make of it, son? Look sharp. You’re a member of the Force, now, an’ it’s up to you to use your brains.”
“It’s smallpox,” ventured Connie, with an involuntary shudder.
“No, it ain’t!” contradicted the officer, gruffly. The boy looked puzzled. “Go, on,” growled the older man.
“Well—he came a long distance”
“How do you figger that out?”
“Why, his grub is all gone, and”
“Mightn’t of had none to start with. Go on.”
Connie was rapidly losing his confidence. He glanced uncertainly into the face of his companion, who was scowling at the still form on the blanket.
“Go on. What else?” urged the Sergeant.
“He was nearly starved”
“Might of be’n a skinny Injun to start with. Go on.” So thick and fast came the objections that Connie was completely crestfallen.
“That’s about all I can see—and I guess that’s mostly wrong. What do you make of it?”
Dan McKeever grinned: “You’re all right, kid—far as you go. But you don’t go far enough.”
“You said it wasn’t smallpox,” interrupted the boy.
“Take another look. Look careful.” The man pointed to the mottled and festered face of the dead Indian. “Does that look like smallpox?” Connie looked again and turned a puzzled face toward the big officer.
“Yes,” he answered, “it does, but”
“There ain’t no ‘buts’ about it. Look-a-here, kid. You’re a-gettin’ your first lesson in police work. It’s a business that calls on a man for all the power of observation he’s got, because, most always, up here in the North, there ain’t no witnesses to what’s goin’ on, an’ a man’s got to depend on the sign. But observation ain’t all. You’ve got to be sure of yourself. It don’t do a man no good to be right if he don’t know he’s right. If a man’s right an’ don’t know he’s right, he might better be wrong—see? Now, take our friend, here. You say: ‘It’s smallpox.’ I say: ‘No, it ain’t.’ An’ you believed me, an’ let it go at that.”
The big officer smote his palm with a mighty fist. “When you seen that there blotched-up face you know’d doggone well it was smallpox! Now, why didn’t you stick to it? When you know a thing, stick to it, no matter who tells you contrary; me, or the Commissioner, or the Governor-General, or the King, hisself—it doesn’t make no difference what we think about it. Just you say to yourself: ‘All right, you poor simps—think it ain’t smallpox, if you want to. But—me, I’m Connie Morgan, Regimental Number 4524, R. N. W. M. P. I’m paid to be right—an’ I am right! If you want to think this here defunk Injun is a nice ol’ lady that died in her bed of the pip—go to it! But, bein’ as this here is my case, I’ll work it out on the idee that he’s a starvin’ Injun that’s travelled a long distance, an’ has died of smallpox! ’Cause you was right in all your guesses—far as you went.’ Do you get me?”
“Sure, Dan, I see, now,” smiled the boy. “And I’ll not forget it, either. But you said I didn’t go far enough. What else do you see?”
Sergeant Dan looked thoughtful: “I see enough to tell me that you an’ me has stumbled onto some real work. An’ it’ll be work that’ll take us many a mile back from the big river. This here specimen is from beyond the mountains—he’s got deer-skin moccasins an’ a carcajo cap, an’ they ain’t neither deer nor carcajo in the land of the Rats an’ North Yukons. Besides that, he’s packin’ an H. B. blanket, an’ H. B. tea, an’ H. B. powder, so he must trade on the Mackenzie, or to the southward—an’ it’s the Mackenzie, ’cause he come down the McQuesten—see that yaller mud? That’s McQuesten River mud, an’ the McQuesten comes out of the north-east. He ain’t wintered none too good an’ for some reason he’s come acrost to the Yukon, ’stead of tradin’ where he used to. They must of be’n two of ’em”
“How do you know?” interrupted Connie, who had followed every word.
“’Cause no Injun never died of smallpox in no canoe—they’d of died on shore—which he done an’ was put in the canoe. Didn’t you see how he was layin’? An’ look there where his hide come against them canoe ribs. If he’d of died there, he’d of be’n warm when he died an’ them ribs would of be’n dented way into his flesh—but they ain’t. He was cold when he was put in. His flesh had set, an’ you can’t hardly see the marks of the canoe ribs. Likewise, no canoe couldn’t of come down them white-water rivers without they was a good man at the paddle. An’ this other must of be’n an Injun, too, ’cause no white man would turn a canoe-load of smallpox loose to pestelize the whole country.”
“What’s this!” exclaimed Connie, as he drew from the moss bag a tightly rolled cylinder of paper that had been overlooked in the first inspection. It was a page from a police note-book, and upon it were scribbled the words:
Hustle vaccination points up here quick. 100 Indians, smallpox—very bad. The Indians will bring you back, but if anything happens, follow up McQuesten to creek marked by blasted pine. Cross divide at head of creek and follow down first creek s. e.
Over and over the Sergeant read the note, and as he read, his brows drew together in a frown. Suddenly he looked up:
“I’ve got it, kid! Rickey run onto this band that was down with the Red Death, an’ he stayed with ’em an’ sent a couple of bucks for help. They come down with it on the trail. One dies, an’ the other put him in the canoe an’ come on to the big river, where he either died or else hit back for the Injun camp.”
The two officers placed the body and effects in the speed boat and, towing the canoe behind, headed the Aurora for Dawson.
Early the following morning Connie Morgan and Sergeant McKeever, together with Ick Far, Indian scout, interpreter, and guide, stepped into the Aurora and sent her roaring full speed for the mouth of Stewart River. Here the Aurora was abandoned and the ascent of the Stewart begun in a canoe. The ensuing five days were days of bone-racking toil, now paddling against the swift current, now poling, and again packing the outfit around a foaming, rock-ribbed rapid, or tugging waist-deep at the tracking line. They arrived, however, without mishap and, halting at the small outpost police station only long enough to replenish the oufit, tackled the smaller and swifter McQuesten.
The nights were short, now, the days long and warm, and from river-bed to timber-line, the Northland was gay with colour. For there is no spring here. As at the touch of a magician’s wand, summer leaps from winter’s boreal embrace, full fledged in her wild riot of glory. Wild-flowers bloomed everywhere in profusion, showing against the light green of the lower levels in great patches of white and purple and scarlet; while above, the dark, almost sombre green of the spruce and fir stood out sharply against the everlasting snows of the naked peaks that flashed and gleamed their blue and coral lights from a million ice-facets
“In all the North there was no tracker like Ick Far.”
in cold defiance of the brighter, more intense colours of the wild gardens of the valleys.
The ascent of the McQuesten was laboriously slow. Day after day the three indomitable officers pushed into the wild, and each day their progress became more difficult. Rapid succeeded rapid with discouraging frequency necessitating innumerable portages, while the steep, stony banks of the diminishing river gave scant foothold for work at the tracking line. But each day the three laboured from daylight to dark, with faces and hands swollen and red from the sting of the mosquitoes that whined about them in countless millions. Unprotesting they toiled, as became sourdoughs, indulging at rare intervals in a rough-growled word of encouragement or approbation.
On the morning of the tenth day, they halted at the mouth of a small creek that bore in from the south-east. High above them, upon a rocky crag, separated far from its kind, like some gaunt, battle-scarred sentinel of the unknown, stood a gnarled, storm-riven banskian tree.
“Look!” cried Connie. “The creek of the blasted pine!”
Ick Far was sent on a scouting expedition and shortly returned with the information that the back trail of the two Indians led up the smaller confluent. He was an odd bit of humanity—was Ick Far. A finished product of the lean, lone land of cold. In all the North was no tracker like him. His skill amounted almost to instinct, for he could tell at a glance, by signs invisible to the eyes of white men, not only that a man or an animal had passed, but its kind, the time of its passing, and its rate of speed.
Dour and haughty and silent, he had stepped one day out of a furious blizzard into a police outpost on Teslin. And dour and haughty and silent he had remained, although for five years he had eaten the salt of the king. They asked him where he came from and he answered “far,” and where he was going, and again he answered “far.” And that one word sums up the entire known biography of the leathern-skinned scout. “Ichabod,” someone named him, and down on the roster he went: “Ichabod Far, Indian, tribe unknown. Guide, interpreter, scout.” Not even in his speech did he reveal a clue to his identity, for twenty dialects of the North were his, and the men of twenty tribes welcomed him as friend, but knew not of his origin. For, beneath the morose, forbidding exterior, men knew that the heart of Ick Far was good, and upon more than one occasion he had faced death that others might live.
So, when Ick Far reported, the canoe and a considerable portion of the grub was cached and the three struck out on foot. The small creek was hardly more than a succession of shallow rapids and tiny cascades, by means of which the waste from the melting snows of the higher levels rushed and plunged toward the river.
“If it wasn’t for the trail leadin’ up this creek, I’d sure never look for no pass yonder,” announced McKeever, pointing to the fore, where a sea of snow-capped peaks were jumbled in titanic confusion. “You’re sure about that trail, Ick?”
The Indian regarded the officer with a pitying expression and, without a word, pointed to the ground at his feet. But although both Connie and the Sergeant stared with all their might, it looked not one whit different from the ground a yard, or a rod to the left, or to the right.
“Oh, sure—clear as mud!” laughed the Sergeant. “All right, Ick, old hand, go to it. But jest the same, them Injuns ain’t mussed up the scenery none scand’lus with their road buildin’.”
The tiny valley narrowed and the way became steeper and rougher. Sodden snow lay in sheltered nooks and gashes, through which the three were forced to wallow to the thighs. The air grew perceptibly colder and, except for stunted evergreen growths, vegetation disappeared.
It was well toward evening when a sudden turn of the narrow ravine revealed sight of the divide; or pass—a jagged notch that cut clean and sharp upon the dimming sky line. Ick Far crept ahead to reconnoitre, while Connie and McKeever snatched a moment’s rest.
“Some pass, kid. What ails old Gay an’ Festive?” Even as the Sergeant spoke, Ick Far’s rifle barked sharply. A second or two of silence, and it barked again—and this time there was no silence! From the scrub in front, and a little to the right of the narrow, rock-, and ice-strewn trail, came a quick, surprised grunt, followed by a roar of mingled pain and rage that rolled and reverberated through the narrow valley.
The next moment, with a scattering of loose stones and a crashing of scrub trees, the form of a giant “bald face” grizzly loomed almost upon the two officers. There was no time for thought. Quick as a flash, Connie threw himself between two rocks and, as the great brute thundered past, the boy saw McKeever slip on a patch of old ice, try to recover, and then, as though hurled from a catapult, ricochet from a rock-wall to bring up against a small twisted sapling, and drop, limp as a rag at its base. From beyond, down the steep valley, a mighty roaring and a rattling avalanche of small stones marked the flight of the wounded bear.
Connie leaped to his feet and rushed to the side of the Sergeant, where he was joined a few moments later by the Indian scout whose ill-timed shot had precipitated the disaster. Together they moved the unconscious man to a flat shelf of rock and proceeded to examine him for injuries. Upon his forehead, above the left eye, a lump the size of a hen’s egg had swelled to an angry blue-black, but this gave them scarcely a thought, for they saw that from the thigh to the top of his high-laced boot, the man’s khaki trousers hung in ribbons where the huge claws had ripped downward almost the entire length of the leg. For a moment the boy gazed at the widening stain that reddened the tattered undergarment, and then, working swiftly with his sheath knife, he bared the injured leg and saw that his worst fears were realized. At the lower termination of the scars the leg was broken where the weight of the twelve-hundred-pound monster had rested for a moment in his wild stampede. Thanks to the strong cloth of the Service trousers and the thickness of the undergarment, the gashes were not deep, and after a careful bathing with ice-water the flow of blood was staunched and the wounds bound up.
With the aid of Ick Far, a babiche line, and a small sapling for a lever, Connie at length succeeded in setting the bones and soon had the satisfaction of seeing the injured member bound tightly in splints. As the last bandage was drawn into place, McKeever opened his eyes and stared foolishly about.
“What—happened?” he asked, weakly.
“Oh, nothing—much,” grinned Connie. “A wounded grizzly wanted to rampse over the spot where you were standing—and he rampsed.”
“I saw him—comin’,” muttered the Sergeant, with a bewildered glance at his leg. “An’ the next thing I remembered the whole mountain jumped sideways an’—” He pointed toward the bandages. “Busted?” he asked. Connie nodded.
Followed a long silence, and again the Sergeant spoke: “Guess I won’t be able to mush on over the pass. You an’ Ick, here, take the points to Rickey. Pack me up some grub from the canoe, an’ I’ll camp here till you get back.”
“Not on your life, Dan! Listen to me,” objected Connie. “I’ve had time to figure it out. I’ll take the points to Rickey, and Ick will”
“No you don’t! Remember, kid, I’m in command of this patrol”
“You’re incapacitated!” fired the boy, “and that leaves me in command. You can’t stay alone in the shape you’re in. Suppose”
“All right, kid,” grinned McKeever, “we’ll split the difference. You stay with me, an’ Ick can go on with the points. He’ll get ’em there quicker’n what you would; an’ then him an’ Rickey can pick us up on the way out.”
Connie shook his head: “Now, listen, Dan. It’s like this: your leg is broken—and broken bad. The quicker you get to a doctor, the better. Ick knows the river and he can get you to McQuesten in two days, and down the Stewart in two more. What would happen if I tried to take a canoe down through those rapids? You know, and so do I. If Ick goes on, we’ve got to wait. Suppose he misses Rickey, or things don’t go right beyond the divide? Suppose your leg doesn’t get along right? We’re still waiting—and we’re not long on grub.
“There’s the divide—I can’t miss it. Ick and I will pack you down to the river, and I’ll mush on with the points.”
“You’re so good at supposin’: supposin’ you don’t find no Injuns? Supposin’ somethin’s happened to Rickey?”
“Well, I can come back, can’t I? I’m no chechako! When you hit the Yukon, you can send Ick back. Anyhow, if things don’t go right, it will only be me—and Rickey, maybe. But if I stay with you and anything should go wrong with Ick, we wouldn’t any of us get out.”
Sergeant McKeever saw the truth of the boy’s words and at length gave a grudging assent:
“All right. You ain’t no chechako. You’ll make it. Roll in, now, ’cause we got a hard job ahead.”
The task of transporting the injured Sergeant down the steep, rough trail to the river was indeed “a hard job,” consuming the better part of two days—days of muscle-straining labour for Connie and Ick Far, and of excruciating agony for McKeever, whose injured leg protested with a wrench of fierce pain at each jolt or unavoidable bumping of the rude blanket and pole litter. But not a groan, nor a word of protest escaped him, and always he greeted the anxious looks of his bearers with encouraging, if often white-lipped, smiles. At last the river was reached and McKeever made comfortable upon his blankets in the bottom of the canoe. Ick Far took his place and, with paddle resting against the bank, looked at Connie.
“Dem Yella Knife,” he grunted, “y’u watch ’em good. Too mooch medicine man. Som’ tam’ good Injun—som’ tam’ ver’ bad.”
“So long, kid,” called McKeever, waving his hand, “you’ll go through a-whoopin’. One policeman is worth a whole band of Injuns—an’ they know it. Let ’em see you know it, too. Handle ’em like you owned ’em—an’ if anything goes wrong, jest you remember that the Mounted will comb Canada for the last crawlin’ varmint of ’em!”
Ick Far shoved off, and Connie watched the canoe shoot out into the current under the short, powerful strokes of the Indian’s paddle.